An Introduction to the Photo Collection of Rev. Carter D. Holton Part IV
The vast quantity of the photo collection left by Rev. Carter Holton is not only the real historical witness to the social cultural life of the Tibetan-Gansu region in the period of 1928 to 1949, but also do provide an authentic material or archive to the factual interaction among the ethnic groups such as Tibetans, Qiang, Tu, Mongols, Salar, Hui, Dongxiang, Qargan, Bao’an, and Han Chinese. Furthermore, this photo collection supplies the true comprehensive pictures on religious life among Tibetan Lama Buddhism, Han Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Christianity and other folk level religious dimension in the Republic period (1927-1949). The great value of this collection lies on the plain fact that the Tibetan-Gansu region is almost the most central part of the inner Asia, so isolated from other parts of the world by the deserts, mountains, deep valleys, rapid rivers, and natural barriers which blocking people’s way to explore it; It also situates in the time that wars, ethnic confrontations, political turmoil and various social forces competed each other, hence prevented people accessing the region and giving the facts and reports to the outside, Rev. Holton’s photos provide the people and later generations in this world the data in a unbelievable way to show the history of this isolated region, therefore, present us the research and studying stuff which is always short of the basic and authentic materials for academics and archive recording. Even for the geographic and topographic study the photos taken by Rev. Carter Holton in nearly one century ago supply us a scenery landscape in this region which was so valuable that some of them were published by the National Geography Magazine. Rev. Carter Holton dedicated an important part of his life for the missionary course in the spiritual searching for our civilization, he has also harnessed us with such a unique method in recording the social and cultural visible life in a functionary role for the wonderful treasure like a historical museum. Thus, Rev. Carter Holton and his missionary colleagues in a generation of the early part of the 20th century set a very good example for us and for the later generations in life model in senses of recording the history and culture in the Tibetan-Gansu region.
In a brief survey, any readers are able to find a general catalogue of the photo collection of Rev. Carter Holton: nearly 3000 pieces of the photos reflect Tibetan Lama Buddhism, its Lama monasteries, religious activities, rituals and its believers with their variety of clothes, jewelries, living styles, therefore, belonging to the different tribes and sects in Lama Buddhism; nearly 1000 pieces of the photos show the contents of Islam which including Salar Islam, Hui Islam, Dongxiang Islam, Bao’an Islam and Qargan Islam which were further divided into different factions of the Muslims in Sufi orders, suborders, and Ikhwani groups, Salafiyya group, Qadim group etc. and their mosques and Qubbas (tombs); about several hundred pieces of the photos relate with Taoism and Han Chinese Buddhism which on the basis of Taoist temples and Buddhist temples as well as their believers such as Han Chinese, their ritual and practices in the folk religious traditions else; about a few hundred pieces of the photos link with Christian missionary life both Western foreign missionaries who include the Americans, British, Canadians, Scandinavians etc., their preaching activities among the Han Chinese and other ethnic minorities in Tibetan-Gansu region and Chinese Christians, their faith and practices in Christianity; There were respectively a few dozens of the photos connect with Tu people and Qiang people, their clothing style and jewelries, their lives in Qinghai and Sichuan provinces. Although majority of the photos in the Holton’s collection are the Tibetan-Gansu region in geographically, there are quite considerable number of the photos were taken in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Xi’an, Kaifeng, Luoyang, Songpan and some places in the areas of Maozhou and Guanxian, namely, today’s Chengdu Plain in Sichuan Province. It is very interesting that there are several pieces of the photos taken in Japan, Hong Kong, and at least a few dozen pieces of the photos are in the United States of America including Washington State, California State.
In a brief survey, any readers are able to find a general catalogue of the photo collection of Rev. Carter Holton: nearly 3000 pieces of the photos reflect Tibetan Lama Buddhism, its Lama monasteries, religious activities, rituals and its believers with their variety of clothes, jewelries, living styles, therefore, belonging to the different tribes and sects in Lama Buddhism; nearly 1000 pieces of the photos show the contents of Islam which including Salar Islam, Hui Islam, Dongxiang Islam, Bao’an Islam and Qargan Islam which were further divided into different factions of the Muslims in Sufi orders, suborders, and Ikhwani groups, Salafiyya group, Qadim group etc. and their mosques and Qubbas (tombs); about several hundred pieces of the photos relate with Taoism and Han Chinese Buddhism which on the basis of Taoist temples and Buddhist temples as well as their believers such as Han Chinese, their ritual and practices in the folk religious traditions else; about a few hundred pieces of the photos link with Christian missionary life both Western foreign missionaries who include the Americans, British, Canadians, Scandinavians etc., their preaching activities among the Han Chinese and other ethnic minorities in Tibetan-Gansu region and Chinese Christians, their faith and practices in Christianity; There were respectively a few dozens of the photos connect with Tu people and Qiang people, their clothing style and jewelries, their lives in Qinghai and Sichuan provinces. Although majority of the photos in the Holton’s collection are the Tibetan-Gansu region in geographically, there are quite considerable number of the photos were taken in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Xi’an, Kaifeng, Luoyang, Songpan and some places in the areas of Maozhou and Guanxian, namely, today’s Chengdu Plain in Sichuan Province. It is very interesting that there are several pieces of the photos taken in Japan, Hong Kong, and at least a few dozen pieces of the photos are in the United States of America including Washington State, California State.
In the range of time, we are able to analyze that most of the photos were taken in the period of 1930 to the first half of 1934, the remaining part of the photos in the Holton’s collection is in the period of 1937 to the middle of 1943. Maybe there are some pieces of the photos shot in the period of late 1947 to the middle of 1949. We are wandering why in this period (from late 1947 to the time before Hezhou was taken by the People Liberation Army in August 1949) Rev. Carter Holton did not use his camera to explore the social life in Hezhou (Linxia) society so frequently as he did in the 1930s.
As far as the quality and the skill of the photo taking in this photo collection, although Rev. Carter Holton was an amateur in the photography, and I am definitely not a specialist in photo producing, however, while I showed these photos to some people in China who know the professional skill and art quality of the photography, they informed me that they were quite good in quality and were very skillful. In their words from the comments: some of them are extremely good quality from shooting angle, position, focus, framing, and direction, overview, level, light and exposure etc. Han Haiming, a Salar Muslim business manager told me after I showed some of the photos in the collection to him for his comments in my fieldwork, said that the photographer had very good skill and he [Rev. Holton] had covered good position as he took the shots in his camera in the landscape scenery. The photographer’s level in photography is so high even that in that period and that region no other photos could match with them in quality and vision. Some of them were indeed the masterpieces in the photography reflecting the cultural and social life in that region. Remarkably, the photographic skill of Rev. Carter Holton is able to reach to the professional and specialist’s level from the contents of the photos in his photo collection. After having worked over the photo collection for last three months in this research project I would like give a brief summary concerning the characteristics in historical and cultural features of the photos taken by Rev. Carter Holton as following:
1, the grave variety and diversity in religion, culture and ethnicity for the Tibetan-Gansu region. Almost every major religion in China could be found in these photos: they are the mainstream religion in China society such as Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism and folk religions; However, you also could find some religions are marginal in Mainland China, here they belong to the mainstreams in this region: such as Tibetan Lama Buddhism and Islam; There is a religion newly introduced into, and absolutely marginalized both in China and in the Tibetan-Gansu region: Christianity with a few small denominations such as China Inland Church, Christian & Mission Alliance, Scandinavian Mission Alliance, Pentecostal Church and even Catholic Church. All these religions abovementioned are even divided into farther small factions and sects such as the Yellow Sect and the Red Sect in Tibetan Lama Buddhism; different Sufi orders and suborders in Sufi mystical factions and the traditional group and the new movements such as Qadim, Ikhwani and Salafiyya in Islam; and the different denominations and sects in Christianity so on. The believers who are affiliated into these religious factions and sects are usually organized into different ethnic groups such as Tibetans, Tu, Hui, Salar, Dongxiang, Bao’an, Mongol, Han, Qiang, Kazak, Qargan etc. These groups in religion and ethnicity show their vast diversity in cultural dimension as their way of living: clothing style, jewelries, linguistic, living habits and customs just as reflected in the photo collection. Nevertheless, the photo collection of Rev. Carter Holton exactly tells us the great diverseness of the religious, ethnic and cultural characters concentrated in this crescent-like sized region on the borders of Tibet, China’s Eastern Turkistan, the Mongolian Plain, the Yellow Loess Plain and Sichuan Basin.
2, the very floating characteristics reflect in the trans-cultural, cross-economic and intermarriage etc. social contacting zone of this Tibetan-Gansu border region. Lot of the photos show the different channels in commercial trade, economic links, traffic communication, and social ties which have penetrated or overlapped in all classes, all social organizations and all ethnic kinships and all ecological and productive environments. You can find the contacts between inland China and the borderland, between nomadic economy and agricultural economy, between the urban areas and the rural areas, between Muslims and non-Muslims, between the central governmental and local authorities, between ethnic minorities and Han Chinese majority, between the military troop and the civilian groups, between different religious groups and between different ethnic groups. Therefore, the floating trends connect, bridge, combine, intermingle and melt the sharp diverse entities and make them contact and relate, as a result they have formulated into a body of the Tibetan-Gansu region in which is co-existence with so greatly various ethno-religious landscape in a borderland of Northwest China, the very poor, remote and isolated region.
3, the tension has once mounted in this very diverse and complicated mosaic border region in that particular time. Dozen photos in the Holton’s photo collection have recorded the phenomenon that the religious and ethnic confrontation indeed took place in that period of war and political disorder, and China was plugged into semi-like anarchic society after the overthrown of the Manchu Dynasty and the Republic was not firmly established. First we witness the bloodsheds occurred between Tibetan tribe’s military troop and the Muslim Hui army led by Ma Zhongying, a Hui Muslim warlord: the ruin and the destroyed Tibetan Lama monasteries, mosques, towns, villages, residences. Second we can find the photos that the wrecks of the Christian Church which was sabotaged by the Tibetans and Muslims both were very hostile to the western Christian missionaries. Third a few pieces of the photos in the collection show the tension between the Hui Muslim warlords and the Tibetans as the former ruled Tibetan-Gansu region in the most part of the Republic, the latter felt they were the repressed in their homeland. The fourth we also discover the severe clashes between Han Chinese represented by the Central government and Muslim warlord forces during the power struggle for the regional hegemony in the 1920s and the 1930s. Although the photos have not directly told us the distorted relations among Han Chinese, Muslims and Tibetans, some pictures truly inform us indirectly the complexity in their intertwined relationship, the competition among them in social, economic, military and political spheres.
4, the Tibetan-Gansu region is heavily relying on or relating with the greater environment, namely, the external forces from the surroundings. In spite of very isolated and remoteness, poorly communicated with and from other centers of the civilizations the Tibetan-Gansu always situated in the contact zone influenced, impacted, even determined by the forces from the outside: the Chinese government, the western countries, particularly the Britain and the United States of America, the Japanese military forces which had occupied almost a half of China, the Soviet Union, all these external forces through political controlling, military interfere, commercial trade, missionary preaching, social relation and cultural contacts in different degrees have changed, shaped and transformed the local environment in this Tibetan-Gansu region. Therefore, the local peoples often as the recipient have to accept the enforced impaction or imposed or the exercised influence from the outside in their interaction with them.
5, the dynamic relation between the periphery and the central also cultivates the local survival strategy in a political unstable situation and period. In geographic term, if we consider from the angles of the big powers in the world, particularly, from the profound civilization pattern, the Tibetan-Gansu region is a periphery one in any senses. Truly it locates in a very marginalized place considered from geo-political point of view: so far away from the main world political centers: from the national capital of China, from Moscow, from the main European powers, from Tokyo, from New Delhi, from Tehran, from Istanbul and from Mecca etc. main political and cultural centers. However, the Tibetan-Gansu region could be a socio-cultural corridor or a contact zone among the different patterns of the civilizations in our planet. Even in such as a peripheral place of the Tibetan-Gansu region, the local peoples and societies have developed their very efficient tactics and strategy in dealing with their powerful neighbors, and tackling with the strong rivals and adversaries in their own communication: hospitality, friendship and tolerant, understanding. So many pieces of the photos taken by Rev. Carter Holton expose the contents that the people from the different ethnic groups in the region were very warm hearted toward the outsiders such as the American Christian missionaries who held a different faith and brought in a very odd culture which was so differentiating with their cultures and customs. However, with the symbol of smile and friendly exchange, with the means of hospitality and enthusiasm they had been avoid of the conflict and hostile, and their open-mindedness and kindness have brought them the beneficence for this frankly communication between the periphery and the centrality. This local philosophy toward the outside has made them survival but sometimes affliction also in the drastic social and political changes in the period.
6, Tibetan-Gansu region is a cultural treasure and also a natural, and socio-humanity museum in our academic researching today. A large number of the photos in the Holton’s photo collection depict the cultural life of many ethnic groups who have lived in the place for many generations. Their richness in displaying such a kaleidoscope way not only in physical dimension but also in spiritual dimension to report the real and concrete life in this frontier region both for China and for the world. Since Rev. Carter Holton was a Christian missionary, he hence used his camera to focus on the religious contexts in his photography. The majority pictures in his photo collection are the contents relating with religious buildings, religious rituals, religious customs which cover clothes, ornaments, arts, sport and dance. Even today, we could say bravely that average Chinese in the inland China has little knowledge of this region, its people and its humanity sciences, not to say the people from outside China. Thus, the photo collection left by Rev. Carter Holton truly endows us a cultural wealth and a great treasure in a form of virtual museum as a discipline of socio-humanity which including the fields of religiosity, ethnology, anthropology, histology, sociology and folklore tradition. His contribution has far surpassed his role as a Christian missionary. The value of his photo collection is so self-evident and remarkable in the world academy as well as in China.
